Chair

Media Contact

Michael Kelly

Assistant Professor, Philosophy

Michael R. Kelly, PhD, came to USD in Fall semester of 2013, having previously taught at Boston College. His main area of research is 20th Century Continental philosophy, especially phenomenology from its classical to its contemporary period.

Education

Scholarly and Creative Work

Kelly's research publications and presentations have covered topics such as the relation between time-consciousness and self-awareness, time-consciousness and intentionality, self-awareness and intentionality, and most recently some phenomenological distinctions between envy and sibling emotions such as covetousness, emulation, etc. In addition to articles in anthologies, Kelly has published in journals such as American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, The New Yearbook of Phenomenology, Philosophy Today. Kelly is editor of two volumes -- Bergson and Phenomenology (Palgrave, 2010) and with Jeffery A. Hanson, Michel Henry: The Affects of Thought (Bloomsbury, 2012) -- and is completing (soon, he hopes) a monograph entitled, Phenomenology and the Problem of Time. Meanwhile, he's started writing a work of moral phenomenology that 'deals with' so-called 'negative' emotions and those virtues that may help one overcome one's negative emotions.

Teaching Interests

In addition to his scholarly works, Kelly is interested in the history of philosophy and the history of ideas, or the "Great Books." He enjoys teaching introductory level philosophy courses (such as Human Nature and Ethics) and specialized classes in both the history of continental thought and certain themes (e.g., time-consciousness and subjective life, emotion studies and moral phenomenology, and existentialism).